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them.
        Earlier this afternoon, when he saw Septemus Ryan and James ride into town, he knew immediately that he was looking at the man who had hired the Pinkerton. He remembered from pictures that this was the man whose little girl had been killed.
        He liked trouble, Dodds did. He believed it kept him young. He sensed that he was now going to have plenty of trouble, and very soon.
        
***
        
        The black man and the Mexican in the next cell stared at the nineteen year old who was balled up on his straw cot like a sick colt.
        “Couldn’t you let me go till my pa gets here? You know he’ll go my bail, Sheriff.”
        “I suppose he will. But that don’t mean I can let you go. I didn’t hand down that sentence. Judge Sullivan did. And there ain’t a damn thing I can do about it, even if I wanted to.”
        “All I did was raise a little hell.”
        Dodds had been in the cell block with this kid for ten minutes now. It was enough. He didn’t especially like seeing a boy like this thrown in with a bunch of hardcases, but then again, the kid should have thought about what he was doing when he got drunk the night before and shot up a tavern. He could have killed a few people in all that ruckus.
        Dodds went to the cell door and called for his deputy to let him out. Dodds never took any chances. Only a fool brought keys into a cell with him.
        Through the bars on the high windows, Dodds could see that it was getting dark. His stomach grumbled. He was looking forward to meat loaf and mashed potatoes and peas at Juanita’s Diner down the street. It was Tuesday and that was the Tuesday menu.
        Deputy Harrison, a twenty-five year old with lots of ambition and a certain cunning, but not much intelligence, came through the cell-block door and said, “The pretty boy here giving you any trouble, Sheriff? If he is, I’d be happy to take care of him for you.”
        “No, no trouble,” Dodds said, weary of Harrison’s bluff swaggering manner. Dodds had two deputies, Windom and Harrison. Widom possessed wisdom but no courage and Harrison possessed courage but no wisdom. Together they made Dodds one hell of a deputy.
        “Had to come back and get you anyway, Sheriff,” Harrison said.
        “Oh?”
        “Yep. You got a visitor.”
        “Visitor? Who?”
        “Man named Ryan. Septemus Ryan.”
        “Here you were looking for me, Sheriff.”
        Up close, Ryan gave the same impression he had riding into town this afternoon. A kind of arrogance crossed with a curious sadness.
        The mouth, for instance, was wide and confident, even petulant; but the brown eyes were aggrieved, and deeply so.
        Ryan put out a hand. He had one damn fine grip.
        “Coffee, Mr. Ryan?”
        “Sounds good.”
        When they were seated on their respective sides of Dodds’s desk, tin cups of coffee hot in their hands, Dodds said, “You look familiar to me, Mr. Ryan.”
        Ryan smiled. “You were probably a customer of mine at one time or another. Ryan’s Male Attire in Council Bluffs. The finest fabrics and appointments outside Chicago.” He smiled again. He had a nice, ingratiating smile. His brown eyes were as sad as ever. “If I do say so myself.”
        Dodds decided not to waste any time. “I saw your picture in the state newspaper not too long ago.”
        Ryan just stared at him with those handsome brown eyes. “They was lowering a casket into a grave and you was standing topside of that grave. They was burying your daughter, Mr. Ryan. Or are you going to deny that that was you?”
        Ryan shook his head.
        Dodds leaned forward on his elbows. “Then not too long ago an ex-Pinkerton man came to Myles. He seemed to be looking for somebody special.” A hard smile broke Dodds’s face. “He probably didn’t tell you this part, Mr. Ryan, but one night he got drunk